I am always amazed when people that own vintage gear think It's better than new gear. Are these people just Into nostalgia or are they In denial?
Sonus, I grew up with vinyl and I can tell you, for my ears that's where my primary emphasis is going to remain. Digital has it plus's BUT IMHO, it simply isn't able to bring me the closer to what i hear
at a live venue as well as vinyl. OTOH, IF you are only interested in ease of use then I can see your point. Obviously YMMV.
To answer the OP's original question of "Why do people think vintage gear is better than new gear?". Simple - because it is.
Vintage gear is "better" for the same reasons that "vinyl" is better. Several things going on here;
1) Modern gear is all about "purity" - absolute recreation of and stunning verisimilitude to the original signal. Unfortunately this often comes through as a soulless bore which is incapable of expressing the emotional content of music. Great gear if you enjoy the sound of the gear - not so much if you are looking to be engaged by the music. I don't listen to be captured by the weird capabilities of some incredibly expensive modern piece of whatever as it recreates the sound of the third violinist moving to his right and his wallet catching on the chair. That is not music - that is a sound effect. Stereo pyrotechnics are boring.
2) We all harken back to whatever it is we first heard "music" with - that, no matter our later exposures will always deliver the soundtrack of our heart - to many of us this is the epitome of music. This phenomena explains a great deal of the vinyl resurgence - I want to hear "Ball and Chain" as Janis recorded it on Cheap Thrills - all of the softness and roundness of vinyl brings that tune "home" for me. I don't care about the incredible purity of CD and its vastly extended range - I want to hear that old familiar vinyl sound with all its scratchy limitations.
3) The "old" gear is simply good sounding - nobody has ever built a dome tweeter as dispersive as AR did 40 years ago (Interesting side note; that paragon of soulless sound, one David O. Wilson, has with his latest ridiculously overpriced speaker, returned to a silk dome tweeter - no more unobtainium David?). The old Advents and KLH still sound quite nice - they make music that is engaging and entertaining.
4) And with this good sound there is a significant reduction in price - essentially not so much a reduction as at least an order of magnitude decrease. You can buy an AR-9 for about $1500, spend $1000 more to completely overhaul the crossover and for $2500 you have a speaker that competes quite well with a Magico Q3 or a Sasha (both close to $30k). The old speaker is not as fantastically coherent as the modern, nor is it as smooth across the band - but it goes as low, couples really nicely to "real" rooms and is very engaging despite its rougher character.
5) and the main reason - humans are proud of their possessions - do you really expect somebody with a "vintage" (older) piece of gear to tell you that your soulless, ridiculously overpriced chunk of audio jewelry is "better" than his bargain? Really? What planet do you live on when you are not here?
all of the softness and roundness of vinyl brings that tune "home" for me
I am always amazed when people that own vintage gear think It's better than new gear. Are these people just Into nostalgia or are they In denial?
Depends on what you call vintage, and it also depends on what new gear you consider to be in the running with it.
I'll give you an example. I own a pair of RCA SP20 monoblocks that were made in 1954. They are 20W parallel push-pull tube types configured to run in triode mode. That is pedestrian enough until you look a bit closer. The amps are comprised of one-half percent tolerance components that still meet that specification even after all those years. Transformer iron was initially made for 200W theater amps. Each solder joint has a QC mark, and each one was assembled by an RCA engineer at their pro sound division in Camden. That makes them a lot different from the typical stuff you call vintage. The tubes on my pair are Bendix ones that were made to withstand a 6g force. (It is funny to me how owners of modern equipment like vintage tubes, but reject the old equipment as being somehow inferior.)
Those old amps are only one example of many to be found. There is vintage, and then, there is vintage. You have to define the term with greater clarity.
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